Intergenerational trauma is a topic that has spanned a few of my posts lately between here and Medium. But today, Mother’s Day in the UK, is an opportunity to take a different perspective on my British heritage. I saw a meme ages ago on Facebook (sadly lost in an abyss now, I don’t have it saved) that said something about how we need to not only heal intergenerational trauma, but also celebrate the strengths of our ancestors, because they didn’t pass down only the bad.
Profound. Our ancestors were raised during times when family toxicity and abuse wasn’t discussed openly or even acknowledged. Many of our grandmothers or great-grandmothers weren’t even viewed as humans. They were possessions to men. Only in 1928 could women over twenty-one vote in the UK. Canada preceded this in 1922 by giving the right to vote to white and black women, though Indigenous and Asian women remained excluded. Full suffrage to these women wouldn’t come until 1960.
Hell, women weren’t even allowed to file for divorce in the UK until 1923. Here in Canada, women didn’t have full equal rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms until April 17, 1982, extending this to Indigenous women in 1985. This came about after women’s unequal rights in divorce proceedings were exposed in the 1970’s when Irene Murdoch, an Albertan farm wife, was given a mere $200 a month upon her marriage ending, while her husband was granted the entire farm. She’d spent twenty-five years doing hard labour on that farm only for the court, and her ex-husband, to render it all worthless. She’d receive a lump sum later on, but her case exposed that just because women could file for divorce, didn’t mean they would be viewed on equal grounds.
Women of the past endured years of silence, abuse, marital rape, and endless child bearing and rearing, all because they were viewed as possessions to be handed off from their fathers to a husband. Before the world wars, it was almost impossible for a woman to live on independent means. Men had the jobs, made the money, and women stayed home to raise children. Marriage and motherhood were to be all the emotional fulfillment a woman needed in life. She didn’t need hobbies, or individual thinking, or a job.
The Victorian Era, the particular sliver of time in which I’ve been researching my family, brought about the beginnings of societal change for gender roles. Queen Victoria was a feminine icon, with her doting husband and surrounded by her children, but this didn’t represent every woman. The generic blanket thrown over women with no thought to their individuality is mind-blowing today. Back then, it was a norm.
Men were able to pursue business and career aspirations on the back and heart-breaking labour of women. Wives and mothers ran the house, cleaned, cooked, raised kids, pleased their husbands, remained devoted to religion, and kept up the appearance of the ideal Victorian woman: domestic, busy, diligent, devoted, and loving. They set aside their wants, emotional needs, dreams, and ideas because society deemed their life’s path and place: in the home. They swallowed every piece of their individuality for the sake of conforming to these boxes.
There is a fierce independence in that. A willpower. This would have been such a repetitive lifestyle. Cleaning a house back then wasn’t like it is today. There were no vacuum cleaners or fancy Roombas or dishwashers or electric washers and dryers. Children were viewed as household help, but really, how many of these mothers were going back to re-clean something her kids didn’t do properly? Not to mention, someone still had to shop for groceries and prepare meals and take care of the kids. This was also a time when one in three infants died before their fifth birthday. Mothers faced high infant mortality rates, and the emotional trauma that came from losing their babies to rampant sickness and then being blamed by society for their maternal shortcomings. Through all that, they still had to appease their husbands and keep up appearances. Middle-class families took on servants, but low-income families lacked that option.
Women who rejected marriage and motherhood were figures of pity, dissatisfaction, and a life unfulfilled. They were seen as failures. When she could work, a Victorian women got paid much less than men, or had to resort to illegal means like prostitution. Many lower class young women in Britain became servants to middle-class families. According to the BBC:
“Family budget evidence suggests that around 30-40 per cent of women from working class families contributed significantly to household incomes in the mid-Victorian years.”
A woman’s wages could contribute to her household, but not hold it up alone. Domestic service made up most of these jobs, followed by textile and clothing sectors. Women also did plenty of behind the scenes work in family-owned shops, like bookkeeping, and would carry on the business when her husband died. Again, we see women serving as the backbone to her husband’s home and business life.
The Victorian Era gave way to first-wave feminists who wanted better living conditions for women: better working conditions and wages, and the right to vote. These were the first women who began fighting for what we have now: voting rights, equality, working rights, the ability to choose whether we become mothers, birth control, laws around marital rape and domestic violence, the ability to establish credit and purchase homes and land, and much more. There was a time when we had none of that. When we were no longer usable for child bearing, sex, cleaning up after men and children, or serving as cheap labour to exploitative employers, we were basically useless to society.
Many of these women began fighting against that norm. The female figures in my history were feminists. I come from a line of women who rejected religion and societal norms. My grandmother broke the cycle of toxicity in her own family to marry my grandfather and have what was, for the most part, a happy family in a small coastal Canadian town. My own mother was big into activism when she was young, and remains passionate when it comes to human rights. She has remained glued to the news over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, voicing her sadness over Ukrainians, and anger at both Russia and how to go about stopping them. She raised us to make sound decisions about who we are and what we want. There was never pressure to be in relationships (in fact, quite the opposite) or to have kids.
(Image by Jackson David from Pixabay)
Strength. Resilience. A will to survive adversity. Activism. The need to help others. Viewing others as equal, frowning upon racism, homophobia, or abuse and discrimination of any kind. Always able to extend friendship and compassion even when you have nothing else. Learning from your mistakes and doing better. Setting boundaries and enforcing them. No longer being a doormat for others to walk all over. The women in my family were peacemakers, good friends, hippies, lovers, sisters, a steady hand to those in need, fighters, and activists, willing to fight for independence and freedom, both politically and personally. They are where I learned to stand up every time I was knocked down, staying ready for another round. They were, and remain, so much more than just mothers and wives. And when we understand what it took for them to survive, we can also understand why they donned some of their toxic traits, and continue breaking those cycles while celebrating their strengths.
This is the legacy of women in my heritage. But what about yours? Where did the women of your family’s history descend from? What adversities did they face that passed down strength and resiliency onto you? What can you learn and take from their lives to improve your own? There so many countries and so many different types of people around the world. Cultures, lessons, beliefs abound. Despite the intergenerational traumas of these women, what about them can you also celebrate?
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